Rambling, rumbling, rumination

Ends and Means

Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days is a great little game. Disgaea DS has also been a blast. I’ve clocked 45 or so hours in the former, and 200 or so in the latter. The “main story” of the former took about 30 hours to go through (chasing all side quests), and the “main story” of the latter took about 20 hours (doing some side dungeoneering). I find I keep playing both well past the story’s end, albeit for different reasons.

The core gameplay of KH:358/2 is all about missions. These are bite-sized chunks of the standard KH gameplay, an action-platformer-RPG… thing. Missions range from recon to target hunting to simple baddie smashing (complete with small baddies, medium-sized baddies and Big Bad Boss baddies). None of it is too taxing, but several missions require good timing, quick reflexes and/or knowledge of the terrain.

The core gameplay of Disgaea DS is all about tactical turn-based combat in closed square-grid arenas. Players build up a cast of characters and field combat teams to take down a range of weird enemies. Cutscenes tell a story between fights. The ability to revisit missions and an optional Item World dungeon system provides combat on demand to earn more experience, money and items. None of the tactics are all that demanding, but there are several that provide a more puzzle-like experience, rather than a simple tactical brawl.

The “post-game” is fairly different between the two.

In KH, I’m replaying missions to explore early missions with new abilities, chase tokens and treasures, or even play with alternate characters. (Some are fantastic, some are awful.) The core gameplay really doesn’t change much in the endgame, though, and the missions are exactly the same, only your approach changes. The ends are the same, in other words, but the means change (fairly minimally). I’m still chasing achievements and better loot, not new ways of playing the game. (OK, OK, I can still unlock Sora as a playable character, but that’s not much, since he will play much like Roxas anyway.)

In Disgaea, I’m playing through the storyline again (yay for “New Game +” mechanics!) to see a different ending, but I spend most of my time in the Item World. Item World levels are procedurally generated, and often a great playground for the geopanel system. Every level I go to in the Item World is different. The team I have is pretty static by now, but the stage that I’m playing on changes constantly. I’m constantly tinkering with new content thanks to the procedural floor generator. Sure, the ultimate end goal is always the same (defeat all foes or sneak to the exit), but the path through each level is different. The ends are still the same, then, but the means change considerably more than they do in KH.

This is the difference between 200 and 45 hours logged. I’ll play each more, I’m sure, but in the end, I spend a lot more time playing through the procedural content in Disgaea DS than I do playing through static content in KH. To be fair, procedural content only works in certain formats. The lovingly crafted beautiful 3D worlds in KH don’t lend themselves well to procedural content generation. The procedural content in Disgaea DS is tile-based, with some larger multitile structures, but certainly nothing as carefully presented as KH worlds.

So, if there is a balance between pretty graphics and playability via content generation, I find that I fall squarely in the camp of gameplay. I’m more interested in means than ends, at least when I’m playing games.

It’s not too surprising that I feel much the same way about MMOs. To be sure, the content generation there will naturally be more in line with the KH model, being in 3D and requiring more assets. I’m still most interested in varied, dynamic, interesting gameplay, rather than chasing loot through the same dungeons. Raiders have told me that the dynamics of a group can provide some of that, so I can see myself dungeoneering a little while learning a dungeon, but once it’s on farm status, just going through the motions for better loot or arbitrary Achievements does nothing for me.

No, I want a living, dynamic world that I can influence and mold. I want to color outside the lines, ignoring the ends. I’d be content tinkering with the means, because once I get to the end, that’s all that you have to keep me in your game.

9 Responses

My wife and I devoured the first Kingdom Hearts game on the PS2, and then gave up on the series after trying to play the second one and hating it. How essential is an ongoing knowledge of the series to playing the DS version, and how similar (or different) is it to the old PS2 games?

As for Disgaea, I own it on the PS2 but have never finished it. I end up getting sucked into Item worlds via some perverse compulsion, and then losing all my momentum with the story, and eventually my desire to play evaporates. Totally my own fault, of course, but I’ve followed the same pattern on two attempted play throughs.

Let’s see, there was an interstitial KH game on the GBA; Chain of Memories. That one explains what happens to Sora in between KH 1 and 2. KH358/2 explains what happens to Roxas and some key bits of Riku’s story in between the KH 1 and 2. It also explains a good chunk about the Organization XIII, the antagonists in the emo hoodies from KH2 (and the “Deep Dive” bonus movie at the end of KH1).

Roxas is Sora’s “Nobody”, created when Sora was a heartless for a while back in KH1. Since Roxas effectively is Sora, albeit sort of an alternative version of him, the game is still digging a bit into Sora’s character and how his heart drives the actions of those involved with him, whether friend or foe.

So 358/2 is another interstitial story. The end of it dovetails directly into KH2.

I’m a big fan of the first game, but I think they just started making junk up for the second one. Chain of Memories and 358/2 are filling in the gaps a bit, but honestly, it still seems a bit “story by the seat of our pants” flavored, what with abstract metaphysics and characters introduced as little more than plot hooks for other side stories. (The upcoming “Birth by Sleep” is a prequel that also explains more backstory.)

Perhaps that’s the inevitable fate of an IP that was designed as a standalone product that then becomes popular enough to sustain a series. Well, that, and when you have a lead artist with a fashion fetish. (Many characters seem to merely exist for the sole purpose of experimenting with weird wardrobes.)

The gameplay is really what sells the KH sequels in my book, though. To that end, 358/2 is my favorite sequel to date. It plays the most like the original (which is a big deal in my book), but with a few additions that open up some more tactical and travel options. Dodge Roll, Block and Glide are back, and it’s a glorious thing. The visuals are great for a DS game, and the controls are clean and responsive. The lack of a thumbstick camera control did throw me at first, but I got used to recentering the camera with a quick tap of the R button.

The story is pretty good, and the addition of a character diary allows for more storytelling as we get into Roxas’ head. Jiminey’s Journal from the first game was more of a chronicle. Roxas’ Diary is first person, and curiously introspective. I wish we had this sort of peek into Sora’s head. Lore fanboyism aside, though, the diary really is a good way to flesh out the story. It lends depth to the character without hammering the point home via cutscenes.

Speaking of cutscenes, there are an inordinate number of them in a certain location, doing pretty much the same thing. It can be onerous to some, but at the same time, it really does underscore the rather hollow life that Roxas leads, and lends credibility to his eventual rebellion.

Erm… so yeah, the story is good, and can even stand on its own fairly well as an exploration of an amnesiac and his motivations. That said, much of the lore doesn’t make sense if you haven’t at least played the first game, and the Organization’s goals make the most sense if you’ve played the second to completion. It really does need to be treated as a midquel to get the most out of it.

As an action-RPG-thing that you can play in DS-sized bites, it works very well. It’s fun to play.

Lots of words to say: “Yes, you need to know some lore, but you can get it from the GameFAQs link if you don’t know it already, and the game is fun to play, much like the original.”

I well understand getting sucked into the Disgaea Item World. I forgot where the story was going when I came back from one sojourn. Good thing that it’s easy to breeze through with some Item World levels and gear under your belt. 😉

I think you enjoy the changes to gameplay the procedural content makes.

The group dynamics raiders talk about? Almost always when I’ve heard anyone talk about group dynamics, it’s in the ‘They didn’t do the same thing as always, and they were crap for it’. Raiders in general resent extra dynamics in their gameplay, as far as I can tell.

Yes, indeedy, I like the gameplay changes of procedural content. It keeps me on my toes, and I appreciate that.

I’ve certainly heard from my share of raiders who just want “progress” as measured by clears and loot, but then there are the guys like Ferrel over at Epic Slant, who actually seems to enjoy the crazy dynamics of raiding. I’m not sure how representative he is of the population at large, but he give me hope that not all raiders are zombies who can’t be bothered with dynamic content.